Yerba Buena Gardens - A Waterfall of Words
Photo: 9yz, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
The city's first name was Yerba Buena, for a fragrant herb that grew wild here, and these gardens borrow it. They sit on land the Redevelopment Agency cleared from the 1960s on. Many of those displaced were older retired workers living in residential hotels, and they organized as Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment, winning court rulings that pushed the city to build replacement housing. The gardens opened in 1993.
Behind the main lawn, a wide waterfall pours over the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Walk behind the falling water to find glass panels etched with words from King's speeches in English and in the languages of San Francisco's sister cities. Sculptor Houston Conwill, poet Estella Majozo and architect Joseph De Pace designed it.
The roar of the water is part of the design. Stand still behind the falls for a moment and read.
More on Wikipedia: Yerba Buena Gardens · Martin Luther King Jr.
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom